


The Tree of Liberty: An Introduction

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: The Tree of Liberty Watered [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Drama, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:38:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU/MaybeKinda Reincarnation </p>
<p>A little dry, only really for if you're reading the other works of the series and are curious. How the Amis met, hooked up, and became 'the Amis' despite none of them being French. </p>
<p>The Amis are Law/Med/Art students in New York in the 21st century. They run a social justice group and no one has to die tragically for France...</p>
<p>...but the Tree of Liberty must be watered and some souls cannot make it through life unscathed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tree of Liberty: An Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very strange collection. I’m not sure how it developed into the angst ridden collection it is, but here we are. Hopefully not all the stories in this set will be sad and dramatic, but I’m just going to go where the muses take me. Set in New York in the modern age, because NYU is the only school I can think of where a group of friends can almost all be gay without defying statistics. 
> 
> Please ignore the complete inappropriateness of their names for the country/time period, and the fact that none of them seem to have first names.
> 
> So far includes two sister series: The Tree of Liberty Watered (Bit more bloody) and The Tree of Liberty Flowering (A little more romantic)
> 
> Pairings: 
> 
> -Enjolras/Grantaire (With much resistance, I finally succumb. Not without drama, of course. I just can’t see these two having a fairytale romance without tears.)
> 
> -Marius/Cosette (You win, Hugo, I just can’t break these two apart.)
> 
> -Combeferre/Eponine (I have no idea who the hell introduced me to this concept, but I’m now enthusiastically shipping it. I once scoffed at this pairing, considering they never interact in the book or musical, besides him carrying her body away in the new film. But what started as a ‘pair the spares’ has turned into real adoration of pairing the most stable Ami with the most unstable. I hope to make my Eponine as delightfully insane as book!Eponine.)
> 
> -Courfeyrac/Jean Prouvaire (Picked up from fanon. Can’t let it go.)
> 
> -Bahorel/Feuilly (Another pick up from fanon I can’t let go.)
> 
> -Joly/Bossuet (Seriously. Who doesn’t ship them? Musichetta doesn't appear here yet, but she may come in later if I find somewhere she particularly fits.)
> 
>  
> 
> Also, a note of warning: This work won’t actually ship Enjolras and Combeferre but I have this weird head-canon where they’re actually soul mates, though they’ve never been physically attracted to one another. (In fact, Combeferre is one of the only straight ones in this series...) They’re Turk and JD, they’re Troy and Abed, they’re Jed Bartlet and Leo McGarry, if you want me to stop with the comedic references. (Actually...yes, the West Wing is perfect for these two.) They won’t be shipped in this work, but I have others I may one day post where they are involved, and as a result, I think I accidentally write them a bit more physically affectionate than appropriate. I’d just chalk it up to their long friendship and how comfortable they are with each other.

_The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants._

_-Thomas Jefferson_

Introduction: Where We Obligingly Explain How Everyone Meets (And Starts Having Sex)

Enjolras meets Combeferre on the first day of high school. It has already been an awful day for the blond. It was his first time away from home, and it seems like everyone else has known each other for years. He feels utterly alone in this prestigious New England boarding school, and the others haven’t exactly been kind to him. He knows he’s good looking, but he doesn’t understand how to use it. The girls giggle behind his back, only making him blush, and the boys are instantly jealous. 

He has no interest in them. The girls or the boys, neither in lust nor friendship. 

But he’s still lonely. 

It’s been like this his entire life, a child too intense for the others to keep up with. He’s always been by himself, shunted to the side as his parents attended fancy functions and left his care to a string of nannies and day care centers. Now he’s at boarding school, feeling just as alien and alone as ever.

Until he is sitting by himself on a bench by the football field, doing homework, and he’s approached by a quiet boy with spectacles balanced precariously on his nose and soft brown hair. 

“Um, do you mind if I join you?” He sounds just as uncertain and lonely as Enjolras, so he pulls his bag off the bench and the other boy sits down. And thus, he is introduced to Combeferre. There is no way they could have known what was to come, that day, sitting on that bench in the weak autumn sun, but somehow Enjolras knows that something’s just begun.

That he doesn’t have to be alone anymore. 

 

The two are inseparable through high school, and apply to all the same universities, unable to bear the thought of being without the other. Though their souls are bound through some cosmic mystery, they have never (okay, rarely, but they don’t talk about that night anymore) been tempted into making their relationship sexual. Enjolras had come to the realization midway through their junior year that he was far more attracted to the other boys at their school than the girls, but, though he loved Combeferre with all his heart, he doesn’t feel the need for physical intimacy to supplement their spiritual intimacy. 

Combeferre in turn, shields Enjolras from the worst comments, the worst inappropriate jokes about his sexuality. Despite being secure in his sexual identity, Enjolras remains naive about sex, and still turns pink at the mean mention of anything explicit. Combeferre does not remain as unaware as Enjolras, dating a girl throughout their later high school years, who dumps him the night before graduation. Enjolras spends that night with him, curled with him under the covers, like they have so many nights before when one of them needed comfort. 

They ultimately decide on NYU, where Combeferre studies Anthropology on a pre-med track, and Enjolras studies International Relations, pre-law. In their freshman dorm, they meet Courfeyrac, who within the first ten minutes makes Enjolras turn an alarming shade of red. Courfeyrac is bi, and completely unabashed in it. He is a slut, for lack of a better term, and has no qualms about being called so. He is also pre-law, and can hold his own with Enjolras in a debate on a good day. (Enjolras usually wins though. Enjolras has a power of speech not many can match.) They all take French together for their language requirement, so Courfeyrac starts calling them the Amis, and the name sticks. 

(They all eventually declare a French minor together, inexplicably drawn to the language.)

Their sophomore year they meet Joly, who Combeferre instantly takes under his wing. The slight young man is consumed with his hypochondria, and Combeferre often has to convince him that he’s not dying of cholera or smallpox. (“You can’t get smallpox anymore, Joly...”) In spite of, or perhaps because of, his hypochondria he is also pre-med, and Combeferre is always happy to help him study for General Chemistry or Biology. 

Midway through the year, Lesgle, or L’aigle, or Bossuet, quite literally tumbles into their lives, slipping on a patch of ice in front of the library when Combeferre and Joly are leaving. He twisted his ankle, and Combeferre and Joly insists on taking him to student health. Combeferre can see the way Joly’s eyes light up when the other student talks, the way they already move like they’re orbiting each other. Combeferre leaves Joly to help Bossuet home, giving them space. It still takes them until mid-February to hook up, but once they do, they are never out of each others’ company. 

Once they discover the Musain, it becomes their headquarters. They spend practically every weekend in the top room of the bar, studying, drinking, planning protests that largely go unnoticed by the community at large. One night, Bahorel enters their lives by taking a swing at a New School student who was getting a little too aggressive with Enjolras. The blond had caught the thread of the other student’s conversation while getting the others drinks at the bar. The conversation had been nauseatingly right wing, and Enjolras couldn’t help the witty quip that tumbled from his lips. It was not appreciated. The argument quickly escalated to a fight, one which the slim blond had no chance of winning, until Bahorel came to his defense. Combeferre and Bossuet manage to pull Enjolras and their new friend out of the fray, and they run for it. Joly fusses over Enjolras while Combeferre profusely thanks Bahorel. From then on, the tall, brilliant, pugnacious law student becomes their protector. 

Jean Prouvaire becomes an Ami when Courfeyrac falls head over heels in love with him. The poet is reading a thin paperback that turns out to be Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell in the fountain when Courfeyrac sees him. Not the best start to a relationship, but Courfeyrac says its love at first sight, and no one can question it. They’re apart even less often than Joly and Bossuet, and much more publicly affectionate. 

Everyone but Joly and Jehan graduates and moves on to the professional schools, Joly following Combeferre into the medical school a year later. They finally leave NYU housing, with Combeferre moving in with Joly and Bossuet and Enjolras with Courfeyrac. (It’s the first time in nearly a decade Combeferre and Enjolras have lived apart, but they agreed they needed their space, and to be close to their respective internships.) 

Courfeyrac brings a lost Marius to the Amis one day and he spends the next year living off and on with Courfeyrac and Enjolras. He and Enjolras don’t exactly get along, however, clashing frequently on political issues, so he moves out, into a cheap apartment in the Bronx. His neighbor, Eponine, quickly becomes infatuated with him, and tags along to Amis meetings. Everyone likes her (including Combeferre...a little too much), so she sticks around even after Marius falls hopelessly in love with a girl who works in the bookstore, Cosette. What no one likes is Eponine’s sometimes hook up Montparnasse, who is almost certainly a drug dealer operating out a seedy downtown club called the Patron-Minette. 

Everyone is relieved (Combeferre particularly), but worried, when Eponine shows up at Enjolras’ door one night with her eight year old brother curled in her arms, wanting to get clean. Enjolras and Courfeyrac take care of the kid, Gavroche, over the weekend while she gets herself checked into outpatient therapy. A few days later, she returns from collecting her stuff from Montparnasse’s apartment trailing a too skinny, red headed young man with dark circles under his eyes and paint splatters on his hands. Feuilly chain smokes to cover trembling hands and cold sweats, and Bahorel takes an instant liking to him. No one’s sure _when_ they start sleeping together or even _if_ they’re sleeping together, but before long they’re living together and looking for a third roommate to drive down their rent costs. 

They find that roommate in Grantaire, another student at the Studio School with Feuilly. They bring him to the Musain one night, where he instantly gets into an argument with Enjolras. They are polar opposites in opinion and Combeferre almost brings it to a halt. But the medical student catches the glint in Enjolras’ eye and the healthy flush on his cheeks and lets him continue. Later, he listens patiently as Enjolras rants about the newest member to their society. Their relationship does not start easy, nor does it continue easily. Grantaire’s cynicism and drinking drive a wedge between them. Enjolras spends more nights ranting furiously or curled up in tears in Combeferre’s bed than in Grantaire’s in those first months, but they stick with it. 

It’s barely perceptible, but slowly Enjolras notices that Eponine’s at Combeferre’s more often than not when he comes around, and he gradually lets her closer, until the three of them stretch out on the bed during his bad fights with Grantaire. They both listen patiently to his venting anger, and on really bad nights Eponine rubs his back while Combeferre strokes his hair and Enjolras tries not to weep. 

It takes nearly ten years for them all to come together, Les Amis. But there they are. On peculiar nights when they all gather in the upstairs room at the Musain, Enjolras closes his eyes and swears he is transported. One second, they’ll be gabbing about their studies or the latest TV obsession in English, then he’d close his eyes and they’d be talking about opera or the injustices of absolute monarchies in French. 

Even more peculiar are the nights Enjolras wakes with a start from vivid nightmares of blood, and gunshots, and barricades...

...And distant beautiful vistas, moving ever closer.


End file.
